HW 7b

Omnivore’s Dilemma By Michael Pollan

Chapter 6:

High-fructose corn syrup replaced sugar and has become the leading source of sweetener in all food. This raised calories in food resulting in people consuming more calories. Coca-Cola and Pepsi were able to use the High-fructose corn syrup to take out sugar which is cheaper, which aloud Coca-Cola and Pepsi to make bigger bottles.

Gems:
Public health problems cost us “90 billion a year.”(p.102)

“Three of every five Americans are overweight; one out of five is obese.” (p.102)

A dollar can buy 1,2000 calories of potato chips and cookies or it can buy yoy 250 calories of carrots. (p.108)

Thoughts:
High-fructose corn syrup has made American people fatter. Since Pepsi and Coca-Cola has used high-fructose corn syrup they have been able to give people more soda for pennies more and from chapter 6 when people are given more food or drink than they need, they still eat it. If the companies were not out to become millionaires they would have stayed with sugar and people would not drink soda in such large moderations.

Chapter 7:

Corn being processed into different food items is how McDonalds has changed the way of fast food. They have created a profiting food industry that is not good for people to eat.

Gems:
“five grams of TBHQ can kill.” (p.114) About 125 nuggets 

“In truth, my cheeseburger’s relationship to beef seemed nearly as metaphorical as the nugget’s relationship to a chicken,” (p. 114)

“Soda (100 percent corn), milk shake (78 percent), salad dressing (65 percent)…”(p.117)

Thoughts: 
This chapter has made me never want to eat McDonalds again. This is a very big thing for me to say because I think it tastes good and I have read books and seen movies about what McDonalds does to people. But I’m young, it’s good, I work out so I like to think it goes away but to think that the nuggets at a high amount can kill me and the meat is not real meat makes me sick. Why would any one want to eat meat made out of corn? 

Chapter 8: 

Grass farms are the opposite from industrial farming. Animals on the farm eat the grass and take care of it. It’s a cycle. This is where organic food comes into the modern era.

Gems:
Look at a farmer’s bookshelf; the emotion there shows what kind of farmer he is. (p.132)

"Because a healthy soil digests the dead to nourish the living, Salatin calls it the earth's stomach." (p.127)

Thoughts:
Why can’t all farms run like this? It is a better way of life for all creatures. All the extra food we have, we do nothing with. If we our not giving all this extra food to the hungry, why doesn’t everyone have organic fames? The reason I see that the famer just wants to sell their product make money and let some one else deal with what happens to it. The more food they have to sell the more money they make. But that attitude is wrong. Everything people eat starts at a farm and if food were just made naturally there would be a healthier America. 

Chapter 9: 

The idea of organic food for most Americans is a pure good substance that is made with out chemicals. But organic famers have fallen to greed just like the farmers before them. Organic farm can no longer hold the name as organic after investigations were done.

Gems:
"Indeed, the longer I shopped in Whole Foods, the more I thought that this is a place where the skills of a literary critic might come in handy- those, and perhaps also a journalist's." (p.136)

“The inspiration for organic was to find a way to feed ourselves more in keeping with the logic of nature, to build a food system that looked more like an ecosystem that would draw its fertility and energy from the sun,” (p. 183).

Thoughts:
Like I have said before any human in America wants to make money. But I thought people that ran organic farms were doing it to make America a better place because why else would you do it. This makes me lose hope in peoples willingness to change. America still has not accepted that what we are eat is bad.


Chapter 10:

Joel has a farm that he says is better than organic because it sustains it self by sun energy. The sun grows the grass, which in turn the cows eat then support it. The farm does not fit into our society because it does not fit the industrialized world.

Gems:
“Cows eating grasses that had themselves eaten the sun: The food chain at work in this pasture could not be any shorter or simpler,” (p. 195).

“We seldom focus on farming’s role in global warming, but as much as a third of all the greenhouse gases that human activity has added to the atmosphere can be attributed to the saw and the plow,” (p. 198).

Thoughts: 
This is the most logical thing I feel. It cost no money to feed or grow the crops so why wouldn’t every one do it. I still feel that people need speed in their lives. The faster they sell cows the faster they get rich.